Another Wednesday - time for Jen's challenge report. If you are just tuning in, Wednesdays are challenge days with my IRL friend Jen over at A Drop in the Bucket. Last week, I challenged Jen to read Food Rules by Michael Pollan.
Read on for her thoughts on the book:
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“ A land with lots of herring can get along with few doctors.” –Dutch Proverb
Alright, so that might be the one piece of advice that I can’t get on board with. Herring? No thank you. Have I tried it? No. Will I ever? Maybe if you pay me.
But as for the rest of the book: Yes, yes, and yes. It is sort of a collection of all of the good advice, the “duh, I knew that”, and a few “oh, really?” rules for eating.
First off, let me tell you that Michael is a journalist, who has done a lot of research on food, so he is just like you and me. Not a scientist, doctor or nutritionist, but an everyday Joe Mike who wants to share what he has learned {and sell a few books, duh. Who doesn’t?}. So right away, I knew I would appreciate what he had to say.
It is broken into three sections:
Part 1: What should I eat?
Part 2: What kind of food should I eat?
Part 3: How should I eat?
Just to prove I read the whole book I wanted to share some of my favorite nuggets. {wink}
What should I eat?
• “Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.” He uses Go-GURT as an example (mostly because of the packaging), which I specifically am not really in agreement with. Because of its something that is somewhat healthy and my son will eat it? I’m going with it. But on the whole, I am in agreement…pretty sure most chips weren’t around back in the 1800’s. And we all know they aren’t good for us.
• “It’s not food if it’s called the same name in every language. (Think Big Mac, Cheetos or Pringles.)” Having spent the last year in the Netherlands brings this one very close to home.
What kind of food should I eat?
• He shares a Chinese proverb: “Eating what stands on one leg [mushrooms and plant foods] is better than eating what stands on two legs [fowl], which is better than eating what stands on four legs [cow, pigs, and other mammals].”
How should I eat?
• “Ask yourself not, Am I full? But, Is my hunger gone?” Many cultures recommend being done with your meal when you are 67-80% full. Little bit different than what we are used with “clean off your plate!”, right?
• “The banquet is in the first bite”. As you keeping eating, you get more calories, but it likely won’t taste as good as in the beginning of the meal.
• Treats are fine, but treat them as treats. This is the first I had heard of the S policy: “no snacks, no seconds, no sweets—except on days that begin with the letter S.”
To go along with the S policy, I just have to say I appreciated reading this book because it demonstrates that really, if we are simple with our food –which will take less time and effort—we can still stop our hunger and savor our food.
Okay, now that I am done being cheesy {pun TOTALLY intended} its time for Tracey’s challenge.
If you have stopped over at my bloggy home you’d find that the reason I started my blog was to document how and when I cross things off of my “bucket list”. It has evolved a bit, and now is more of a place that I share my story and thoughts of living in the moment, being grateful, and making the most out of TODAY.
But, I think bucket lists are a great way to keep life interesting, and make some of those every days even that much more special. So, Tracey, my challenge to you is to come up with five to ten things that you would want to have on a bucket list. I know you sort of have one in your head…but put pen to paper fingers to keyboard friend!
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A bucket list...interesting. I guess I probably have something similar in my head. After all, I just checked off an item by running a marathon last week. But I've never actually made a list. This will be fun. Come back next week to see what I've created.
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